West Coast Insights: Scaling Up? Tune In To Our GoGlobal MeetUp

Blog Article
03 Mar 2015

We can all agree that a good problem to have as a fast growing company is suddenly finding yourselves with customers all around the world. While companies may quickly realize they need to support and build their customer base, they don’t know where to start. Let us tell you.

Recently, document productivity company Nitro opened its San Francisco office for our inaugural GoGlobal MeetUp. Nitro, along with online survey software company SurveyMonkey and software analytics company New Relic, participated in a lively dialogue on when and how to take your company global. The MeetUp may be over but the knowledge gleaned from these three companies lives on – online that is. We’re airing the event on March 4 at 10 a.m. PT on Ustream. The panel features distinguished leaders from all three companies. Together with IDA Ireland, they discuss the challenges of expanding and how they managed and succeeded in expanding their teams to Ireland and across Europe.

Topics covered include what factors played in to the decision to open an office, what were the triggers, how to manage company culture across multiple locations, which locations they looked at and what the most challenging and rewarding parts of the process were.

Gina O’Reilly, COO at Nitro
Part of the Nitro team since 2008, as COO, Gina has global responsibility for Sales, Marketing, Biz Dev, Customer Service & Success, and Operations, including Employee Experience and Talent. With over 12 years of software industry experience, Gina is truly passionate about helping make the Nitro culture and work environment as creative, challenging, fun, and inspiring as it can be, so that every Nitronaut feels they're involved in growing the business and that their contribution counts. Prior to Nitro, Gina was with activePDF, a leading provider of server-side PDF solutions and developer tools, where she oversaw global sales and marketing.

Fluent in French, Gina holds an MBA from the University of Phoenix as well as a BA International Marketing & Languages from Dublin City University, Ireland. In her spare time, Gina loves good food and wine, keeping fit, travel, and plenty of California sunshine.

Brennan O’Donnell, VP of Sales and Customer Success at SurveyMonkey
Brennan joined SurveyMonkey in July 2013. Prior to joining the company, he was a VP at Yammer, where he helped lead Yammer to a $1.2B acquisition by Microsoft. Previously, Brennan spent 9 years at Google, most recently leading Global Sales Operations for Google’s Enterprise business. He also built and led multiple sales and operations teams across Google’s advertising, search and consumer businesses, and spent 7 years in Europe where he was on the management team that built out Google’s EMEA business operations. Brennan received his BS degree from Northwestern University.

Steve McElfresh, VP People Operations at New Relic
Steve began work with New Relic as a consultant in 2008, when it was still a virtual gleam in Lew Cirne’s eye. He finally joined New Relic full time in 2012 as VP of People.

Before New Relic, Steve led two HR consulting organizations, Saratoga Institute and HR Futures, working with start-ups and F100 companies on the people challenges of organizational growth. Previously, he had been the chief HR officer with several technology organizations, most recently SRI International. Steve holds a PhD from Boston College and a JD from Santa Clara University.